Preheat the oven to 350° and place oven rack in the middle of the oven. Line a 9” x 13” glass baking dish with parchment paper and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. Set aside.

Combine the butter and brown sugar in a mixer, and mix on medium high speed for 2 minutes to thoroughly combine. This will not be light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat for one minute. Add the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until well incorporated. Lastly, stir in the walnut pieces.

Spread into the baking dish and bake at 350° for 35 minutes, rotating the pan around halfway through. Cool completely.

Once cool, transfer the parchment paper to a cutting board. To make smile cutting easier, use a large sharp knife to cut one horizontal side crust off and one vertical side crust off. Using a drinking glass (about 3” in diameter,) push down on the top of the glass to cut the cookies into crescent shapes (smiles). Think of the large spicy smile block as a board. As you work your way up, there will be two columns of smiles. You will have pieces left over…yummy!

Betsy's tidbits:

The parchment paper will slide around when you spread the batter on it. Hold the edge of the paper to keep it in place. The edges will not be perfectly smooth, but they are not part of the smile.

The drinking glass is used, instead of a cookie cutter, because the cookie is too high for most cookie cutters.

The first cookie cut in each column will look like a half circle. The rest will be smiles.

If you are not feeling like it is a smiley type of day, cut the baked goodies into bars and serve like a brownie.

Recipe by Desserts Required at https://www.dessertsrequired.com/spicy-smiles